chaze

I knew that the IP of the account was not a factor when Google decided if your domain is going to move up the SEO ranks. But according to this Article by the Google filter guy himself the Hostname is a factor. I am sure it's not black and white but...

A host with thousands of accounts on one server like hostgator, godaddy, and I have heard dreamhost mean if another website on your server is in on the front page og Google you are very much less likely to get on there after.

"Seven of the top 10 results all came from one domain, and the urls look a little… well, let’s say fishy. In 1999 and early 2000, search engines would often return 50 results from the same domain in the search results. One nice change that Google introduced in February 2000 was “host crowding,” which only showed two results from each hostname (here’s what a hostname is). Suddenly, Google’s search results were much cleaner and more diverse! It was a really nice win–we even got email fan letters. Unfortunately, just a few months later people were creating multiple subdomains to get around host crowding, as the results above show. Google later added more robust code to prevent that sort of subdomain abuse and to ensure better diversity. That’s why it’s pretty much a wash now when deciding whether to use subdomains vs. subdirectories."